


Just a Painted Grin

by haymitch (noblydonedonnanoble)



Category: Inside Daisy Clover (1965)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, canon-relevant references to past suicidal thoughts and statutory rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:19:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29304096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/haymitch
Summary: The gossip rags tore her apart first.Or rather, Raymond Swan tore her apart through the gossip rags.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Just a Painted Grin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HuntsCunt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HuntsCunt/gifts).



> RIP Christopher Plummer

The gossip rags tore her apart first.

Or rather, Raymond Swan tore her apart through the gossip rags. But oh, he kept his hands clean. When he was quoted, he was all concern, all remorseful words for the young ingenue who crumbled with the combined loss of her marriage and her mother.

(The impact of his hands, his mouth on her, that never saw its way to print.)

Daisy saw the mags on street corners, and she laughed.

Funny, that Swan thought he would get to her that way, if everything else he’d done had not been enough.

The lawyers were worse. It didn’t matter to them, that Daisy had had no say in her contract, or that Swan had destroyed her—or at least done his absolute best.

If he had _won_ , she’d have finished herself off in that oven.

She hadn’t let him win that fight, and she wasn’t going to let him win this one.

The jury was a bunch of idiots.

That was the only explanation Daisy had for why they didn’t realize how much it had all been a trick. Her sob story background, everything with Wade Lewis (with _Lewis Wade_ ), all up to her fall from grace.

Swan had _told them_ how to feel about all of it, and they hadn’t even noticed.

Daisy sat in the courtroom, looking around at everyone. They stared at her like she had personally broken each of their hearts. And hell, maybe she had, without even noticing. It sure as hell felt that way, if Swan was to be believed.

“Why won’t you tell them what I told you?” she demanded of her lawyer after the second day of the trial. Her abysmal lawyer, the best she could afford when none of her earnings had really ever been hers.

(Not that this stopped Raymond Swan from trying to get them back.)

“I’m having a hard enough time getting them to like you as it is,” he told her. Exasperated. Tired. “I’m not going to try to convince them that the handsome, charming man in there did _anything_ to you. That’s just begging to lose.”

She lost anyway.

Honestly, she got a better deal than what Swan wanted. He’d demanded jail, exorbitant fines. (Only in the judge’s chambers, though. In those damn gossip mags, it was all, “We hope to get her back in the studio someday, once this silly business is all cleared up.”)

Instead, she gave up the guarantee to royalties for future releases of her films.

(She didn’t even know that Gloria and Harry had bargained for that. Who could have said whether she was more impressed by their greed or disappointed to lose out on the money.)

Whatever money she had to her name went back to Swan.

And a psychiatrist. She had to see a damn psychiatrist.

“We can’t risk another breakdown,” the judge told her sternly.

“I didn’t want him to touch me,” she told the psychiatrist. Her voice sounded surer than she felt. “Hell, I don’t think I wanted anything from him. I think deep down I knew from the first moment I saw him that he wanted to bleed me dry some way. Any way or every way.” Turning her head to face him, she grimaced. “You probably don’t even believe me.”

He shook his head. “I believe you.”

Daisy swallowed. Her lips trembled, and she said more.


End file.
